by David P. Greisman - He thanked every fan and reporter who approached him, each saying that they thought he had won the fight. He spent the next morning and afternoon reposting and replying to others’ sentiments on Twitter, all in support of a boxer they believed had deserved the victory.

It all served as cold comfort to Steve Cunningham.

Every voice, every message only added to the outrage. Rather than soothe him, they only underlined the painful reality of what he, and they, could only see as a robbery.

“What more can I do, other than knock a dude out?” Cunningham said afterward. “What more can I do?”

He had done all he could for 12 rounds against Tomasz Adamek.

He had not been knocked down, as had happened three times four years ago, when they had first fought.

He had not been badly hurt, had not been drawn into a war he could not win, had not strayed too far from a strategy of discipline, of using speed and movement to offset his stronger but slower pursuer.

He had not been awarded the decision.

One judge gave Adamek seven rounds to Cunningham’s five. Another judge scored it even wider for the Polish heavyweight, at eight rounds to four. Only one official observer had Cunningham ahead, seeing it seven to five.

That single dissenting vote joined a larger chorus. Yet it was just those other two sets of numbers that truly counted.

This is the heartbreak of being a boxer, of being involved in a sport where the scores are not accumulated via baskets, goals, runs or touchdowns, but instead are decided by a trio of people seated feet away from the action. There is the cliché of a fighter taking his fate into his own hands, of taking his opponent out and making certain that the result is not left to those three observers positioned along the ring apron.

That is not always possible. Sometimes a fighter can only hope to do his job as well as he desires, and then he can only hope that the judges do their jobs as well as the boxers deserve for them to do.